"The Brain: The Final Frontier. Neural Engineering at Penn State"

Steven Schiff, M.D.Director of the Penn State Center for Neural Engineering, the Brush Chair Professor of Engineering, Professor of Neurosurgery, Physics, and Engineering Science and Mechanics

Penn State has a new center where engineers, scientists, brain surgeons, and veterinarians are all working together to engineer new diagnostic techniques and treatments related to the brain. The work ranges from new tools to look deep into the working brain to missile flight controls to better interpret brain scans to understanding how climate drives newborn infant infections in Africa. Dr. Steven Schiff will discuss the goals of this new center and the center's ongoing research, including the possibility of creating more treatment options for seizures and moved disorders such as Parkinson's disease.

Steven Schiff trained as a pediatric neurosurgeon and still scrubs into the operating room once a week at Penn State Hershey Medical Center in addition to his teaching responsibilities and running the Penn State Center for Neural Engineering—one of the most interdisciplinary bioengineering collaborations in the nation, with the goal of contributing significantly to the next generation of brain-computer interface technologies. He has spent decades researching the physics of nervous system disorders, particularly epilepsy, the spasticity of Cerebral Palsy, and Parkinson's disease.